Press Specialization/ Pec Tear

[Bradley Gish]

33/6’1/240: Few years Training experience

Coach Carter,

About 18 months ago I sustained a full pec tear as I was wrapping up an LP on bench. It was diagnosed as a type 2 tear I believe, that is where the tendon tears from the muscle belly( not the avulsions that we see around CrossFit where the tendon actually snaps away from the humerus, which I hear usually has a much worse prognosis). Although it was explained to me that surgery was strictly elective, the Ortho recommended it. I eventually elected not to have the repair, based on the fact that merely 10 days after the injury occurred, I could still press a fairly high percentage of my most current 5RM for a set of 5, with very little issue. Since then I’ve mainly just LP my press exclusively, with the addition of one TM cycle with decent success. My press wasn’t really that strong prior to the injury, but I’ve PRed it many times since. My most recent PRs are 173x5/200x1. So now I know that I need to move beyond LP in order to continue to drive progress, but I’m very limited on what I can do accessory wise. I would love to include Pin Presses, but it’s out of the question since I own the T 2 Rack. I tested the waters with some close grip bench, but even with a really close grip at light loads still aggravated that area. I did find that I could do high inclines with a somewhat narrow grip with out any issue though. So I was thinking of putting together a HLM template as such:

High Incline
155x5x5

Strict press( no initial hip thrust/ no stretch reflex)
125x5x3

Press 2.0/Olympic
140x5x3

Granted, these starting numbers are somewhat conservative, but it would give me a little wiggle room for adjustments. Does this sound logical for driving the press up, or would I maybe make better progress on more of a TM based program? Sorry for all of the rambling, but I figured the majority of it was relevant in order for you to make an analysis. Thanks sir!

[Brent Carter]

No worries. No rambling detected here.

You could do either this or a TM template both would probably work just fine with the TM being a bit more stressful. For accessory work I would also consider lying tricep extensions.